Garrett Epps

35th annual Key West Literary Seminar

Professor Garrett Epps joined the University of Baltimore School of Law in 2008. He teaches courses in Constitutional Law, First Amendment, and Fiction and Non-Fiction Writing for Law Students. He is a contributing writer to the Atlantic Online and serves as the magazine’s Supreme Court correspondent. He is also a contributing editor of The American Prospect. Epps’ most recent book, American Justice 2014: Nine Clashing Visions on the Supreme Court, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Epps’ previous book, American Epic: Reading the U.S. Constitution, was published in 2013 by Oxford University Press. In March 2014, American Epic was named a finalist for the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Book award. Two of his previous books, Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America (2006) and To an Unknown God: Religious Freedom on Trial (2001), were both also Silver Gavel finalists. A former staff writer for The Washington Post, Epps has written for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Nation, The New Republic and The American Prospect.

Epps received his LL.M. in Comparative and International Law and his J.D. from Duke University, where he served as articles editor of Law and Contemporary Problems and graduated with the Willis Smith Award for the highest three-year academic average. Before attending law school, Epps earned his M.A. in English Writing in 1975 from Hollins College and his B.A. in 1972 from Harvard College, where he was editor of The Harvard Crimson.

Selected Bibliography

American Epic: Reading the U.S. Constitution (2013)Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America (2007)To An Unknown God: Religious Freedom On Trial (2001)The Shad Treatment (1997)
The Floating Island: A Tale of Washington (1985)